Federal Minister for Water Syed Javed Ali Shah on Thursday dropped a bombshell in the National Assembly by informing the House that construction of the Diamer-Bhasha Dam could not be started as yet due to non-arrangement of finances and the dam won’t be completed in the next 10 years due to the delay.

About Rs25 billion worth of water is wasted every year. That’s what the Wapda chairman reportedly told the Public Accounts Committee earlier this week. That is an understatement. Only about 10 percent of the available 145 million acre feet (maf) of water can be stored in existing reservoirs – global average is around 40 percent. Thanks to insufficient storage capacity and systemic losses, the waste is huge.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan expects China to fund a long-delayed Indus river mega dam project in Gilgit-Baltistan with work beginning next year, Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal said in an interview.

Pakistan has been keen for years to build a cascade of mega dams along the Indus flowing down from the Himalayas, but has struggled to raise money from international institutions amid opposition from its nuclear-armed neighbor India.

ISLAMABAD: In a first-of-its-kind investment in Pakistan’s troubled energy sector, Islamabad and Beijing on Saturday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to develop North Indus River Cascade with an estimated cost of US$ 50 billion that has the potential of generating approximately 40,000mw of hydroelectric power.

The water challenge faced by Pakistan today is bigger than that of the power sector and it is getting worse with each passing day. Pakistan desperately needs to increase its water storage capacity. This was stated in a fact sheet issued Tuesday by the Institute for Policy Reforms. The Institute recommends that government must start building the Diamer Bhasha dam forthwith. The scale and complexity of the project requires the involvement of top level government officials. This will speed up the project work in Pakistan and highlight its priority to international donors.